I’m Christian

August 12, 2014

3:40

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Hi. I’m Christian. I never thought I’d be involved in missions work someday. I thought that stuff was best left to the professionals.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Christian. I never thought I’d be involved in missions work someday. I thought that stuff was best left to the professionals. I’m from America and in my town there was a church on practically every corner. I had no reason to think that it wasn’t like that everywhere else in the world.

It wasn’t until I took a short-term missions trip with Envision that I realized that not everybody has the same kind of access to the gospel as we are privileged to have.

It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the place—the music, the food, the culture, —but especially the people. They were a lot like you and me. They had plans for the future; they valued family and education, and having a good time.

But I couldn’t help but notice the overwhelming need. I can’t explain to you the brokenness I saw all around me. There was the physical poverty of contaminated drinking water and malnutrition. But there was also the spiritual poverty of having absolutely no hope.

I was shaken to my core.

If you were to knock on doors in the U.S., it would take about six tries before someone answered who could tell you how to have a relationship with Jesus. In places like post-modern Europe, that number is closer to 1 in 500 doors. In parts of the world where there is no access to the gospel, it’s a staggering 1 in 30,000 doors!

I began to realize that I had taken my privileged access to the gospel for granted. I’d never even thought about this “access divide” that I had just witnessed and was feeling more and more compelled to bring this access to people who are lost without it—lost in a system of religion that binds people into submission; lost in the discord of deities and idols; lost in a belief that we are alone in this world, that human enlightenment is the path to truth, and that our own works will determine whether we get to go to heaven or not.

The Bible says in Romans chapter 10, “how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it?”

I mean, what would this place be like if Jesus’ name could be declared publically? What if these people truly understood what He did for them and why He did it?

That was it for me. I was so overwhelmed by the grace I received for my own salvation, I knew I had to share the same grace with those who don’t have any access to it. Many of us share the call to send workers into the harvest field. But my family and I were called to go.

We left our friends and family and careers and now we’re in language study in a country where it’s not exactly safe to talk about Jesus openly, that is, until we first earn the trust of those around us. We are doing much more than just declaring the gospel message. We’re living it out through our actions by serving our adopted community. Otherwise, we can’t speak in ways they’ll really hear us.

We spend our time building friendships with our new neighbors so that they might start asking about the reason for our hope. And of course, we’ll be happy to tell them!

So, here we are! And you know– there are many others in The Alliance who are willing to answer the call, just like us, to create access to the gospel in places where Jesus’ Name is not known.

I’m Christian and this is my story.

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